in chemical technology at Iowa State University in 1940, after which he took a job as an industrial chemist with the Campbell Soup Company in Chicago.

[5] Asprey was posted to the Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab) at the University of Chicago, where he joined the effort under Glenn T. Seaborg to devise techniques to separate and purify plutonium.

[6] He was among the atomic-bomb scientists who signed the Szilárd petition in July 1945 to ask U.S. President Harry S. Truman to exercise extreme care in any decision to use the atomic bomb in the war.

These new unnamed elements created in the Met Lab in Chicago were announced to the world by Glenn Seaborg on November 11, 1945, on the radio show Quiz Kids.

[10] They eventually had seven children: Peter Larned, twins Elizabeth (Betty) and Barbara (Barb), Robert Russell (Bobby), Margaret Susan (Peggy), Thomas Arthur (Tom), and William John (Bill).

He decided to enter the University of California, Berkeley, and get his Ph.D. in chemistry under the supervision of Burris B. Cunningham, whom he had worked for at the Metallurgical Laboratory.